


Little Girl, Go to War ("Translated from the Original Trigedasleng" Remix)

by morphogenesis



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-22 23:35:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20330362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphogenesis/pseuds/morphogenesis
Summary: Forget born to die -- Octavia thinks she was born to be hated.





	Little Girl, Go to War ("Translated from the Original Trigedasleng" Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Redrikki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redrikki/gifts).

> AU to Season 6. Title from “Everyone Is Someone’s” by Rio en Medio. Remix of “Born to Float” by Redrikki. Thanks to the author for offering their work for remixing. My Very First Remix, it was fun!

The first thing Bellamy does once he’s sure Octavia’s awake is turn his back on her.

Octavia thinks she was born to be hated. First she was born a crime, then she was unwanted by Trikru, and then she was _Blodreina_ and, well, she saw how that went.

And every day is a prickling reminder than she’s surrounded by people she ruled through fear, and they have no reason to fear her anymore.

“I failed you first,” Indra says. She talks over Octavia, locked in a holding cell for taking a swing at someone who purposefully upset her lunch tray. Literal spilled milk isn’t a big deal for most people, but Octavia is a former ruler and if she starts tolerating any disrespect she’ll be devoured. Indra should understand that. “I lead you to be a warrior, I encouraged you to be brutal.” She leans against the door with her back to Octavia and sighs. “And then I was shocked when you were.”

No, Octavia wants to say. Just no. “I’m not just a warrior anymore, and a leader must do anything so her people will survive. Ask Clarke.” Clarke avoids her, maybe because she knows Octavia is right.

Indra turns to face her and looks so sad. “Of all people, I want you to understand that there is more to life than survival.”

*

They find a reason to extend her stay, and then another. The people who bring her food drop it just within her reach, not caring if it splatters. She is growing disgustingly used to this disrespect. 

She doesn’t have to readjust to solitary confinement. She’s found a meditative peace in it. She has time and space to condition and do training forms and talk to herself.

“No, don’t worry about it, I want to stay,” she tells Bellamy when he visits and he tries not to roll his eyes. Outside he’s doing the work of survival and leading and maybe he gets it now, what it’s like to lead when there’s truly no abundance, space, or freedom. It’s a different game then isn’t it? “I’m better off here than you are out there.”

*

She has a dream about her first time in the water on Earth. It smelled like what Lincoln later taught her was mud and sulfur and dead plants, and it was cold and deep, but it was freedom. 

She can’t remember another time when she was that happy or at ease.

When she wakes up she does as many push-ups and squat thrusts as she can handle, until her arms give out and she’s covered in sweat from the lack of conditioning real sparring provides. 

*

A virulent flu strain rips through the ship and arrives at her cell via an infected spoon or a cook who didn’t wash their hands before handling the serving utensils; it doesn’t matter, Octavia is still puking all the same. She hits a point where she lays on the ground and stays there. Lincoln, Indra, all the other warriors taught her how to find water in plants, how to hide in the mud to stay cool and safe all day if she has to, and how to treat wounds but there’s little she can use of that wisdom up here.

Come to think of it, most of her experience in space amounts to hiding on or under floors. How far she’s come.

Bellamy comes while she’s asleep and when she wakes he gives her more water and soup and entreats her to take the medicine. When Octavia was little and had a hacking cough so loud Mom was scared it would alert the neighbors, so she or Bellamy would apologetically cover Octavia’s mouth in hopes of stifling it, Bellamy would take a tiny sip of medicine first to show Octavia it didn’t hurt.

“You first,” Octavia says jokingly, and is surprised when he actually goes to do it. “Holy shit, Bell.”

*

“Are they still trying to decide how to kill me?” she asks Bellamy when he brings her the last dose of medicine. “I can’t imagine I’m here for their protection.” She should be.

“No.” He sets the bottle down and measures out a spoonful; there are pills and shots and she imagines maybe he picked this to invoke their childhood. “Clarke spoke up for you.”

“And what did you do?”

Bellamy is quiet.

*

“No, no, they would love you so much if they could meet you,” Mom said once when Octavia asked if she’d done something to deserve being hidden. “It’s not your fault. You were born to be loved.”

Octavia wakes up with that phrase in her mind. She can’t remember a time when she believed it.

*

Bellamy’s idea of recreation is a chess set. He taught her how to play back on the Ark, a lifetime ago. Several Octavias ago. Now there’s just the two of them again in a small cell while he ponders what to do with his Knight and ignores her when she asks what he’s doing.

“I think,” he says after he takes her Queen, “I’m trying to sleep it off. So if you could just let me be here with you I’d appreciate it.”

“Uh-oh, he’s mad,” she says, and futilely positions her men to protect the King. Chess isn’t violent but it has an element of skill she respects. Indra taught her to fight but she would also ask Octavia “What-if?” questions about battlefield scenarios. Would she save a fallen comrade and risk both of them dying, or abandon them so she could live and tell the rest of her party where the enemy was? Things like that. Chess requires this sort of thinking. As Octavia plays she feels like old muscles are unknotting, awakening.

*

“Do you want to be one of the first people who goes to the ground?” Bellamy asks.

“Again?”

“We have no idea what it’ll be like.” He shifts and looks past her. “We’re gonna need someone who knows how to fight.”

“Oh, so I’m the sacrificial lamb.”

Bellamy doesn’t deny it may come to that.

“Fine. I need to stretch my legs.”

*

Octavia walks beyond the group and finds a body of water; it’s got a reddish sheen to it that makes the water violet and it doesn’t smell like death; when she dangles her glove into it its fingertips come out intact. She looks up at the sky and figures the air is breathable, screw it, and leaps.

The water’s warm but not boiling, and tastes fresh. When she surfaces she leans back and brings her legs up so she can float. She holds her core tight and lets her arms bob by her sides. There was a time, a long time ago, when she was this free and easy and could just be, but then it passed like this will pass and she has to own that.

She wasn’t born to do anything—she was simply born.


End file.
